Chapter 15: Reconstruction

Emancipation

________ was the single most important economic, social, and political outcome of the war.

political strife

War- weary from a decade of military and ________, so- called Stalwart Republicans turned from the idealism of civil rights to the practicality of economics and party politics.

Freedpeople

________ placed a great emphasis on education for their children and themselves, and many churches served as schoolhouses and as a result became central to the freedom struggle.

South Carolina

________ and Mississippi passed laws known as Black Codes to regulate Black behavior and impose social and economic control.

AERA

The ________ was split over whether Black male suffrage should take precedence over universal suffrage, given the political climate of the South.

Reconstruction Era

The ________ comprised the effort to restore southern states to the Union and to redefine African Americans place in American society.

Violence

________ was used in the in the post- emancipation period to stifle Black advancement and return to the old order.

Fourteenth Amendment

The ________ developed concurrently with the Civil Rights Act to ensure its constitutionality, granting citizenship to all people born in the United States.

Reconstruction Act

The first ________ dissolved state governments and divided the South into five military districts.

President Abraham Lincoln

________ began planning for the reunification of the United States in the fall of 1863.

African Americans

Freedom empowered ________ in the South to rebuild families, make contracts, hold property, and move freely for the first time.

Johnson

________ offered southern states a quick restoration to the Union, only requiring that they ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, void their ordinances of secession, and repudiate their Confederate debts.

Klan

The ________ drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but ________ groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerrilla groups.

African American officeholders

________ came from diverse backgrounds, with some born free and some who gained freedom before the war, but most African American officeholders gained their freedom during the war.

assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The ________ propelled Vice President Andrew Johnson into the executive office in April 1865.

Ku Klux Klan

The ________ (KKK) was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868.

Black churches

________ provided centralized leadership and organization in post- emancipation communities.

Riots against Black political authority, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups

Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms, what were they?

Black Codes

____________________ were laws in southern states that regulated Black behavior and imposed social and economic control

They responded with legislation aimed at protecting freedmen and restructuring political relations in the South

How did Republicans respond to Black Codes?

They thought it would create a new group of Republican voters

Why did Republicans want freedmen to be able to vote?

It dissolved state governments and divided the South into five military districts, and required that states would have to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, write new constitutions enfranchising African Americans, and abolish repressive “Black Codes” before rejoining the union

What did the new Reconstruction Act accomplish?

Land, especially since some freedmen were promised that land from Georgia and South Carolina would be set aside as homestead

What was the main desire of freedmen?

There was a split over whether Black male suffrage should take precedence over universal suffrage, given the political climate of the South

How did abolitionist and women’s rights movements begin to clash?

Most violence was in reaction to Republican rallies or conventions, or elections in which Black men were to vote

What were the main targets of racial violence in the South?

They passed the Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871, making it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights and also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States

How did the government respond to southern paramilitary groups?

It ended when northerners abandoned the cause of the formerly enslaved and Democrats recaptured southern politics

Why did Reconstruction end?

Democrats allowed all remaining troops to be removed from the South and guaranteed the South would receive special economic favors in exchange for a Democratic president

What was the Compromise of 1877?